Lenin statue toppled in Ukraine’s largest protest since 2004

JIM HEINTZ AND YURAS KARMANAU

KIEV — The Associated Press

Published
Sunday, Dec. 08 2013,

Hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the streets of
Ukraine’s capital on Sunday, toppling a statue of former Soviet leader
Vladimir Lenin and blockading key government buildings in an escalating
standoff with the president over the future of the country.

The biggest demonstration in the former Soviet republic since
Ukraine’s pro-democracy Orange Revolution in 2004 led the government to
fire back. It announced an investigation of opposition leaders for an
alleged attempt to seize power and warned the demonstrators they could
face criminal charges.

The West pressed for a peaceful settlement.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians flooded the centre of Kyiv, the
capital, to demand President Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster after he ditched
ties with the European Union in favour of Russia and sent police to
break up an earlier protest in the nearly three-week standoff.

“Ukraine is tired of Yanukovych. We need new rules. We need to
completely change those in power,” said protester Kostyantyn Meselyuk,
42. “Europe can help us.”

Packing Independence Square as far as the eye could see, Ukrainians
waving EU flags sang the national anthem and shouted “Resignation!” and
“Down with the gang!” in a reference to Yanukovych’s regime.

“I am convinced that after these events, dictatorship will never
survive in our country,” world boxing champion and top opposition leader
Vitali Klitschko told reporters. “People will not tolerate when they are
beaten, when their mouths are shut, when their principles and values are
ignored.”

As darkness fell, the conflict escalated further with protesters
blockading key government buildings in Kyiv with cars, barricades and
tents.

The protests have had an anti-Russian component because Russia had
worked aggressively to derail the EU deal with threats of trade
retaliation against Ukraine.

About a kilometre from the main square, one group of anti-government
protesters toppled the city’s landmark statue of Lenin and decapitated
it Sunday evening.

Protesters then took turns beating on the torso of the fallen statue,
while others lined up to collect a piece of the stone. The crowd chanted
“Glory to Ukraine!”

The demonstrations erupted last month after Yanukovych shelved a
long-planned treaty with the 28-nation European Union to focus on ties
with Russia. They were also galvanized by police violence and fears that
Yanukovych was on the verge of bringing his country into a Russian-led
economic alliance, which critics say could end Ukraine’s sovereignty.

“It’s not just a simple revolution,” Oleh Tyahnybok, an opposition
leader with the national Svoboda party, told the crowd in a fiery speech
from a giant stage. “It’s a revolution of dignity.”

Yet a solution to the crisis appeared elusive, with the government
making no concessions and the opposition issuing contradictory
statements on how to proceed.

Heeding the opposition’s calls, thousands of protesters blocked the
approach to key government buildings in Kyiv by erecting barricades,
setting up tents and parking vehicles, including a giant dump truck.

“We are extending our demonstration. We are going to fight until
victory. We will fight for what we believe in,” opposition leader
Arseniy Yatsenyuk told protesters on Independence Square, which was
drowning in a sea of flags.

The West, meanwhile, scrambled to avoid violence and urged dialogue.

In a phone conversation with Yanukovych, European Commission
President Jose Manuel Barroso stressed “the need for a political”
solution and dispatched EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to Kyiv
next week to mediate a solution. Yanukovych also discussed the crisis
with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Valery Chaliy, head of the Razumkov Center think-tank in Kyiv, said
the West must help resolve the crisis and prevent more violence. “It is
evident that without international mediation this will not be solved in
a peaceful way,” Chaliy said in a telephone interview.

The protest Sunday in sub-zero December temperatures took place on
Independence Square, known as the Maidan, in an echo of the Orange
Revolution. Those protests annulled Yanukovych’s fraud-tainted
presidential victory in 2004, and ushered his pro-Western opponents into
power. Yanukovych returned to the presidency in the 2010 vote.

During a huge demonstration a week ago, several hundred radical
protesters hurled stones and attacked police as they tried to storm the
presidential office. That prompted a violent breakup by the authorities
in which dozens were beaten and injured, including peaceful protesters,
passers-by and journalists.

Ukrainians thinking of emigrating to Canada should think twice.
In Ontario, we have what is called "The Gestapo", a secret police who
are just as feared as the KGB, they have the right to take your children
away from you because you don't agree with the state.

This is an organization that is accountable to the Government of
Ontario, who have their own secret courts, who have their own judges and
a host of legislation to make sure their dirty criminal child abusing
deeds remain secret.

Its called The Children's Aid Societies of Ontario.

In Ottawa, two people, one Child Protection worker, Phillip
Hiltz-Laforge and their lawyer, Marguerite Isobel Lewis commit criminal
offences against the administration of justice to ABUSE CHILDREN and,
the they are supported by their partners in crime, the Ottawa Police who
are directed to lay charges and even drop charges because they have the
"The Power of God".

If you happen to be in another country and ever see the names of Phillip
Hiltz-Laforge or Marguerite Isobel Lewis attempting to enter your
country, deny them entry, send them back to Canada as they are
unconvicted criminals of the worst sort.

There is nothing worse than people in society who are placed in
positions of absolute power and then abuse that power.

In Ontario, the worst criminals, the worst abusers of Absolute Power are
the employees, of Ontario's secretive Cult like private corporations who
run the Ontario Cartel called The Children's Aid Societies of Ontario.

It's time for politicians in Ontario to stop the Billions of Dollars
being spent to support Criminals abusing children and committing
outrageous offences against children and the administration of justice.